ye olde lang syne

That's Dangerman and Mary Ann on the last weekday that the best bar in midtown was open. In our years at Life and Time, Dangerman and I closed down working class bar after bar until finally we landed at Ye Olde. It had the best rock and roll jukebox in the city, the best decorations (it was always Christmas, St Pat's Day, Halloween simultaneously) and Mary Ann, the best waitress. It also had the best clientelle, i.e. we could be pretty sure that we would see no one from work.
Mike has been the bartender for some 34 years, since age 19 when he went to work for his father, who owned the place. He remembers the night the Rockettes did a kick line, the night Liza Minelli had her first legal drink, the budding standup careers of Freddy Prinz, Ruth Rutner, Larry "Curb Your Enthusiasm" David, trying out their acts at the open mike in the corner. He remembers the chi-chi clientelle from Studio 54 across the street slipping over for a quick drink or a quickie in the balcony room.
There's the table of Con-Ed workers, toasting Mike in Champagne. "The most racially diverse table in the city," says Dangerman. "Asian, Indian, Irish, African-American, Carribean—all table wrestling and arguing but together at 'our dive.'" There are the insurance company crowd, the information services nerds, the session musicians from the nearby sound studios, the coworkers having affairs, the hooker cashing a check. Here we all are.
Here are me and Dangerman, dealing with romances and divorces, births and firings, wars and deaths. Here are our little children, eating fries or asleep at the table. At this table, a hundred plots have been hatched, a hundred ledes written and stories edited, a hundred grilled cheese sandwiches consumed, summit conferences held, tears shed. Like now. Mary Ann is crying, Dangerman's eyes are misty. Dolores speaks the epitaph: "We had a lot of fun here—when we should have been at work."
For serious mourners, there's The Tripple Inn Refugee Portal